03 September 2012 – London, UK - Fenergo, the leading provider of client onboarding lifecycle management solutions for corporate, investment and private banks, has today announced the launch of an online FATCA self-certification tool designed to automate the collection of W-8 and W-9 forms. The Fenergo FATCA Self-Certification solution will help financial institutions to expedite the data collection process, reduce the cost of compliance and ensure more accurate compliance reporting.

Under the imminent FATCA regulation, all Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) must conduct an electronic search of their client data to identify the existence of US indicia (e.g. address, residency, zip code, nationality, phone number etc.). Once this search is complete, the FFI must request the completion of W-9, W-8BEN (Ind) or W-8BEN-E forms by clients who have been identified as having a FATCA compliance requirement to ensure the correct tax withholding rate is applied.

Fenergo’s FATCA Self-Certification solution enables financial institutions to automate the collection of W-8 and W-9 forms through an online submission process. Clients with a FATCA compliance requirement will be guided through a simple, step-by-step form-filling process, which ensures that every required field is successfully completed before the form is submitted to the financial institution. The solution performs automatic form validation in real-time against pre-defined IRS rule-sets in an effort to reduce invalid submissions. For example, the solution automatically validates the IRS Tax Identification Number (TIN) to ensure that it exists and is valid before enabling the form to be submitted. It also automatically generates a PDF version of the completed W-8 and W-9 forms, which is then appended to the client’s record.

Capable of integrating with all front and back office systems to enable the sharing of data and the creation of a single, consolidated client view across the institution, the Fenergo FATCA Self-Certification solution fully integrates with both the Fenergo FATCA Compliance and Fenergo Client Onboarding solutions. The information collected from the FATCA Self-Certification tool can be extracted and populated into the client database, automatically applying the appropriate client classification in accordance with the regulation. In addition, the solution automatically schedules the review of submitted data every three years to ensure continued FATCA compliance and triggers an automatic compliance review upon detecting change of circumstance data.

According to Marc Murphy, CEO of Fenergo, “We are entering a period of unprecedented regulation in the financial services industry. All of these upcoming regulations promise to have a significant impact on banking operations and the ability to provide a consistently high level of service to clients. FATCA is just one of these new regulations, which will place onerous demands on financial institutions. We developed the FATCA Self-Certification solution to provide FFIs with a faster and more efficient way of collecting and processing this additional data, while helping to improve compliance and reduce the costs associated with it”.

Win an iPad with Fenergo

Fenergo has recently launched a survey to determine the FATCA readiness of financial institutions in light of the Intergovernmental Model Agreements. All participants to the survey will be automatically entered into a draw to win an iPad, with the winner being announced in October, and will also receive the results of the survey ahead of publication. Click here -http://conta.cc/PLBSfH - to complete the short survey.